Sweets, Geek, Beauty, Random Stuff & Life

London Day Out (16-2-2016)

I love having days out with either my friends or my family. My friend and I decided to have a London Day Out with her & her kids since it was half term. We had originally planned to go to London’s Sealife Aquarium, and well that didn’t work out as planned. Since it was half term, nearly all the places in London were crowded with kids and tourists. This meant that walking through London was going to be a challenge. One word of advice when it is kids holiday times, always book your tickets in advance to make sure you can actually go to the attraction. Normally in the past, we were able to just walk up to the attraction and purchase tickets on the day. After queuing in a long line for a few minutes, we were told that all the tickets were sold out and we should try in at 3-4pm to see if there was any tickets left. I was quite surprised since I never heard of a aquarium having sold out of tickets before and it wasn’t the greatest feeling knowing that you had stood there for a while before being told. So we decided to go to Ripley’s Believe it or not in Piccadilly Circus.

Once arriving at Ripley’s, there wasn’t actually much of a queue which I was glad about. (If you traveled by train to London, it’s best to get the 2 for 1 deal to purchase tickets. Much cheaper than) The total cost for 2 adults and 4 kids were roughly £100 with the 2 for 1 deal. The building has 4 levels of different weird things, from shrunken heads to pictures made from lint. Many interesting things, that was still very weird. And let’s just say that it’s fine to take prams into this place but requires finding staff workers to take you through the lifts, since everywhere is stairs. I won’t say much about the things I saw here, since it’ll be much more interesting to see them yourself than me explaining it. Though here are a few things I saw to tempt you.

Overall even though I wasn’t sure the kids would like the place, they seemed to enjoy themselves looking at the weird things considering that the kids were 4-9 years old. They had fun especially through the mirror maze (photo below, sorry about it being blurry but you get the gist), which is one of the attractions that everyone should go to (well for those that don’t mind dark places and are quite careful. The first time I went in it, I bumped into the mirror many times. This was why they suggest having your arms straight forward. Lol) There is another attraction in the building called the Laser Race but due to the long queue, we decided not to do this. But this is a place that is worth the money to visit and a must for those like weird things.

Afterwards we decided to go for lunch at Ed’s Easy Diner near Leicester Square. For those that don’t know, Ed’s Easy Diner is an American themed diner that specializes in burgers and milkshakes. So obviously I had to have a burger and milkshake. I chose a Chicken BLT with onions rings, coleslaw & fries (£12) and an Oreo milkshake (£5).

The food and drink were delicious though the experience would have been better if the service was better. When we entered the place, we weren’t greeted with anyone. There were no waiters around except the kitchen staff who didn’t say anything, and with a sign saying you have to wait here until you’re taken to your seats. We stood for a few minutes until nearly when I was going to sit down a staff appears. That staff member seemed to be the only one that was only working, took a while before I actually was able to place my order as he was most of the time not to be seen. 2 more waiters then appeared after receiving my food asking if we were okay with our food. (Where were they hiding?) Overall the price of the food was a reasonable price considering that the plate was actually huge and the milkshake was so thick with ice cream. It actually made up for the service at the beginning. Though this was my first experience at this place, I’m sure that it might have just been this one place. But will definitely try again Ed’s Easy Diner in another location though.

As we were heading to the end of the day, we decided to take the kids to M&M world and Nickelodeon store. For both of these shops, the prices to me were quite high compared to other shops that you can buy these things. Though M&M world have many items that you can’t actually purchase in normal shops, this might be why the prices were so high. A magnet with a Letter and a couple of small images of the M&M characters was about £7. Walking around the shop is interesting to see the different characters and items that they have from cups, M&M dispensers & choosing your own M&M colours as the shop is quite large. I do love the personalised M&M though. (I might have to try it sometime for a special occasion.)

The Nickelodeon shop is actually quite small and mainly filled with SpongeBob stuff compared to the other characters & shows. But being a SpongeBob fan, I was quite happy. Even though some things were expensive, especially the clothes. I had treat myself after that long day. I purchased (you might have seen the photo from my instagram):

A long V-neck monochrome shirt for £26 (bit expensive but why not?)

A sweater for £6.50 (such a great deal)

A Patrick Star vinyl figure (wanted SpongeBob but couldn’t find it, even the staff tried looking for it for me)

Spongbob recycle bag for £2.99 (actually broke on the side which I was kind of disappointed about. The side split.)

Anyways that was my long exciting day out with my friend and her kids. Hope you enjoyed reading this, and maybe you found it interesting and try new things!

Have a nice day! (Hopefully your weather is better than here, currently it’s very windy here in the UK)